Joe Gores - Cons, Scams, and Grifts

Poor Geraldine knew instantly that she was in love. As if sensing this, Yasmine leaned toward her across the table.

“Please, do not form fantasies about me, Geraldine. I am celibate because I have dark and powerful energy fields that shift in dangerous ways when I have sex with anyone.” Indeed, Geraldine could feel that energy enveloping her. Yasmine continued, “I felt your energy from across the room. You are troubled. I often can help those in trouble. A year ago you came to San Francisco from...” She shut her magnificent eyes for the moment, opened them. “Somewhere in the Midwest...”

“I... Dubuque, Iowa,” Geraldine heard herself saying. “I had a good beauty salon job in Dubuque, and I had a secret lover — Ariane. I was happy. But Ariane said she... yearned for the open minds and heady freedoms of the west.”

“And she betrayed you.”

“On our second weekend here.” Geraldine realized that tears were running down her cheeks. “She ran off with a hot-eyed Latina salsa dancer and my seven thousand dollars in savings.”

“So you were stranded,” murmured Yasmine Vlanko.

“Yes. And finding a job was horrible.” She gestured at herself. “I’m shy. I’m overweight. I have no color or clothes sense. Not a problem in Dubuque, but here, all the beauty salons are run by Vietnamese or French or Italian women who hire by nationality or percentage of body fat, I’m not sure which. Not one of them would even take my app. I finally got a job in a funeral home doing cosmetic and hair work on corpses.”

“And you have hated every minute of it,” said Yasmine. She reached across the table to take both of Geraldine’s hands in hers. She closed her eyes. She crooned something under her breath. She opened her eyes again. “Quit your job,” she said. “Then meet me here a week from tonight at ten o’clock — and I will change your life forever.”

She let go of Geraldine’s hands. She stood. Geraldine stood also, impelled by forces she couldn’t understand.

“Here,” said Yasmine. “One week from tonight. If you have quit your job, your life will be changed forever.”

And, somehow, she was gone.

The Ferrari was in the barn, safe and sound. But the Great White Father was going to be unhappy when he saw this month’s expense account, thought Bart Heslip as he zipped north on the beautiful Junipero Serra freeway. A tow job, four new tires — all had been slashed too ferociously to be saved. He fingered his discreetly bandaged ear. It was itching.

The Taurus started missing. He checked the gas gauge. Half-full. Now backfiring. It was a repo out of Minnesota that Kearny bought as a company car after the client balked at transporting charges back to Minnetonka.

He swung the now badly limping car into the Trousdale off-ramp in Burlingame, which took him down through tree-crowded residential tracts to El Camino Real, the Royal Road of the old Spanish missions. Eventually he found a gas station with an attached garage. He told the mechanic what to look for.

The sandy-haired kid was wiping his hands on a bright red cloth as he came back into the office where Bart was gulping down a Diet Pepsi because he liked the bubbles going up his nose.

“Yeah, well, you were right. They sugared your gas tank. Sugar got carried to the distributor, the plugs, the pistons — everything. It formed a glaze. It’s like rock candy in there. You’d have to pull the engine, dismantle it, steam-clean it — which costs a hell of a lot more than that old car’s worth.”

Meryl Blanchett had just returned to her Chestnut Street flat from taking Milli on her morning walk to the Presidio Wall. The phone was ringing when she entered the room. It was an unlisted number, so Meryl picked up immediately. A wonderfully remembered voice spoke.

“Meryl, it is I.”

“Madame Miseria!” she cried. “Thank God! I keep calling you, but nobody answers. And you haven’t cashed my check yet.”

“I am not going to cash it — ever — because of the wonderful thing you are going to do for me. You have your hair done once a week at JeanneMarie Broussard et cie.”

“Yes, but how—” Meryl broke off with a surprisingly girlish giggle. Yana could picture the flush of embarrassment mantling her pleasant cheeks. “But of course, you can see anything you want to see in your crystal ball...”

“And many things I do not wish to see,” said Yana. “I also know that you have great influence with JeanneMarie.”

“I have gotten quite a number of the other docents at the Legion of Honor to patronize her shop, it is true...”

“Here is what you must do,” began Yana. As it was not quite new moon, Meryl could not yet know that Yana’s spells and potions were worthless in binding the feckless Theodore to her.

Meryl instantly agreed. Of course.

Dan Kearny stepped through the front door of DKA wearing his new blue suit, bought in Chicago, and a lightning-pattern tie a saleswoman had told him was the latest thing. Jane Goldson came out of her chair behind the reception desk. She was slight and slender, with a veddy British accent and a skirt that stopped a foot above her knees. Her legs were excellent. To the eternal sorrow of the field men, she would never go out with any of them. She held out an inch-thick stack of phone messages.

“Welcome home, Mr. K. These are the ones who wouldn’t talk with Giselle. Only Mr. K for them. And Mr. Groner has been doing a bird over the missing classic cars from UpScale Motors.”

He thanked her while starting down the busy office past the mostly female skip-tracers and credit checkers and phone workers. It was good to be back. Giving that keynote speech at the convention had been a bearcat. Standing ovation, but still...

“Dan!” Giselle was looking at him from across his own desk. “Great suit. Killer tie. How was Chicago?”

He reclaimed his swivel and tossed his batch of messages down on the blotter. “Terrif. Listen, Giselle, what’s this Jane tells me? That Groner’s on the warpath?”

She sat down across from him. “Nothing like that, Dan. He just keeps calling for reports so he’ll know when to set up the auction of the classic cars. He wants to move them all at once. Last night Bart got the Ferrari convertible down in Woodside. They took a shot at him, but didn’t hit the car.” She told him of Bart’s adventures, ending with, “Anyway, he and Larry had to call a tow truck—”

“If he thinks he’s going to stick the tires on his expense account, after pulling a stupid stunt like that...” His private line rang. He snatched it up, said, “Yeah?” into it.

“They sugared the gas tank, too,” said Heslip’s voice.

After a strangled pause, Kearny said with disgust, “Maybe you can raise one of the other field men and bum a ride in.” He threw the receiver in the direction of the phone. As Giselle was replacing it correctly, he said, “How are we doing otherwise?”

The young, taffy-haired woman in the old-fashioned pinch-waist yellow and brown plaid suit and run-over black pumps paused on the sidewalk in front of Brittingham Funeral Directors. Tugging at her mid-calf skirt, she stared up at the impressive inset portico flanked by four double sets of Ionian Greek pillars. Brittingham’s had been serving San Francisco from the same location on Sutter Street between Larkin and Polk since 1850, and to date, not one of their clients had ever come back to complain about their work.

Carter Brittingham IV, great-great-grandson of the founding Brittingham, was standing in the hallway outside the crowded Evergreen Room waiting for the Reverend Dickson, who was, of course, pro forma late. Dickson was a difficult man of God — indeed, in his darkest, most secret moments, Brittingham thought of him as the Reverend Dick head .